


Beyond Antares

by KeyDog (BannedBloodOranges)



Category: Star Trek: Alternate Original Series (Movies)
Genre: Bittersweet, F/M, Fluff, Friendship, Humour, Karaoke, Not Actually Unrequited Love, References to background relationships, Semi -Unrequited Love, Song - Freeform, Tribbles, What Could Have Been
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-07
Updated: 2019-07-07
Packaged: 2020-06-24 01:54:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,631
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19713922
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BannedBloodOranges/pseuds/KeyDog
Summary: He asked, on one of his many visits to Spock Prime, if there was another Uhura. Spock had corrected him gently, said indeed there had been. He revealed a holodisk in his possession, a recording of a woman's voice, warm and lively, cut with laughter between lines about alien love on the Starship Enterprise.Jim Kirk falls in love all over again.





	Beyond Antares

**Author's Note:**

> I own nothing, non-profit fun only.
> 
> Set between Into Darkness and Beyond, as I have not seen the third film.

It's when he sees her walking, crossing the cragged rock to the Klingon - she'd studied _everything_ , hadn't she, not just speech but posture and diction and the way to jerk her chin up in defiance so purely _Klingon_ \- that he realises he loves her.

It comes as a synapse firing somewhere in the back of his brain. He doesn't think at the time, of course, he doesn't, what with tension raw bile in his throat and Spock so still and alert beside him. Her voice is growled with power, alien to his ears, and he's listening to every single word, each drop in her throat, each lift and clack of her tongue.

But the Klingon moves, pushes up her cheeks between his thumb and finger, and Kirk is on his feet, firing clumsy and desperate. Her hair swings as she glances back, the murk blue light caught in her iris, and he has a memory of a girl in a bar, red jewels in her ears, a twist of a smile with shields up over her eyes.

A slug to the face sends the memory dazzling to the back of his brain. Nothing like a Klingon punch to halt cupid's arrow, and he's back to iron on his tongue and teeth rattling in his mouth. He spits out a molar. Bones is going to kill him.

Blood and gravel are easier things to manoeuvre than feelings, thank god, but then Uhura is down beside him, Spock the other side, hauling him up and away. Adrenaline has made everything sick and dizzy. He can't feel his left leg and Uhura grounds him, her hand on his shoulder, gripping all the way down to the bone. Her black nail varnish is flaked, her cuticles ripped from the fight. Jim makes a mental note of booking her a manicure for her birthday as a way of apology, and then he thinks of her birthdays, and all her other birthdays, and the strange fact he might not be around to see them all.

"Captain," she says, her hair loose from her ponytail, cuts on her face and her uniform torn around the knee. "Captain, we have to go."

* * *

It's only later when he mulls it over, does he think he realises what it all meant. He doesn't mull much as a cardinal rule. He's impulsive and proud of it, and sometimes not so proud, but the bottom line is he does first and thinks later, and the fact he has to think first and then do nothing about it at _all_ is a testament to how jarring this all is.

It's also after he died. And lived. In the same hour, and wow, what a story to tell the grandkids he'll never have. Jim Kirk cheated death, but he won't cheat anyone else, especially not his friends, so no, no grandkids.

But he's got a lot of recovering to do. There's a five-year mission somewhere, he's been told, a shiny commission with his name on it. Bones has cursed him out and Spock has stood closer than anybody to his bed, and that is all well and good.

He's happy.

Sure he is.

Right?

* * *

She'd cried.

He could barely see through the fuzz in his eyeballs. Just Spock, emotionally compromised - isn't he always - and her stood beside Scotty, her hands held over her mouth, the shape of her skirt and topknot swinging by her shoulders. Spock had been there, Scotty had been there, Uhura had been there.

 _Nyota,_ he thinks.

Dying sucked, but he didn't mind so much suddenly, could live with it. (In a matter of speaking, maybe.)

It wouldn't matter. He was breathing forty minutes later and Bones was saying he was definitely, _definitely_ going to kill him for real this time.

* * *

According to Spock Prime (he never called him that in his head. Old!Spock worked better in his opinion, or Wrinkly!Spock when he was drunk) they'd been another James Kirk, another Bones, another Scotty.

He asked, on one of his many visits, if there was another Uhura. Spock had corrected him gently, said indeed there _had_ been. He revealed a holodisk in his possession, a recording of a woman's voice, warm and lively, cut with laughter between lines about alien love on the Starship Enterprise.

Jim Kirk falls in love all over again.

* * *

In the middle of a bar on shore leave, he asks Uhura if she can sing. Spock is engaged with the Vulcan elders abroad ship and Uhura must have been tired of all the ceremony, for she had followed him down at his request. As friends, they had laughed and drunk the evening away.

She looks at him, both delighted and irritated.

"Yes," she says.

"They have karaoke here," He's a little drunk on Klingon fire tea. The world is spinning but she stays still in his focus. Her hair is loose around her shoulders, frizzed from the planet's humidity. Her lips are sticky from the Romulan rum, sweet as honey with the ability to knock you down if you have a single shot too many. "Go on. Have a song for your Captain."

"Maybe," she teases. She tucks her hair behind her ear. Forever wary, she adds; "You go first. Then I'll think about it."

"That's not fair!" He slurs, as she sits back, smug. She thinks she's got him. Little does she know, she's had him for years. "I sound like a Gormagander mid-coitus. You don't want that."

"I want it alright," she declares, confident. "Or no song."

Kirk takes another shot. He nods, determined, and staggers to his feet.

"Jim!" She laughs, shaking her head in disbelief, trying to catch his arm. "I wasn't _serious..."_

"A deal is a deal, Lieutenant," He salutes, walking over tables to get to the lonely karaoke stage. She's giggling, drunk. They both are, but its warm and cosy drunk, like a sweet cushion between his ears. "Musn't...shame the Federation..."

"Jim!" She hisses as he struggles with the microphone. "Captain!"

 _Hit Me Baby One More Time_ will forever be a classic. The fact half the bar clears in the first verse just goes to show he's unappreciated in his time.

But he's not looking at them. He's looking at her, at the flash of her teeth as she laughs, her hand over her stomach.

He bows to an empty bar, stumbling as he does so. Uhura is already rising from her seat, tying her hair back in an improvised ponytail. She takes the microphone, and Jim takes his seat, and it's _late._ The planet here has green night skies and purple moons, and the light catches all the colours on Uhura's shell earrings. She types in her song and Jim waits, his bottom lip caught between his teeth, rocking on his stool like a kid.

A dreamy guitar solo swells from the speakers.

He stops.

 _"The skies are green and glowing,_  
_Where my heart is, where my heart is,_  
_Where the scented lunar flower is blooming:_  
_Somewhere, beyond the stars..._  
_Beyond Antares."_

She starts shy. Jim is open-mouthed. Her vibrato quivers with feeling, the notes long and tender.

 _"I'll be back, though it takes forever._  
_Forever is just a day._  
_Forever is just another journey._  
_Tomorrow a stop along the way."_

She studies Jim as she sings, curling her lips in that secret way where he cannot tell what she is thinking. They are alone in the bar.

 _"Then let the years go fading,_  
_Where my heart is, where my heart is,_  
_Where my love eternally is waiting..."_

Jim rises from his stool. He crosses the bar, just shy of where she stands.

He doesn't know what expression he wears. Neither does she, for her smiles fades, but the emotion of it doesn't. She holds out her hand as she nears the end of the song. Not toward the purple moon canoodled on the green skies through the windows, but toward the curve of his cheek.

 _"Somewhere, beyond the stars..._  
_Beyond Antares."_

The guitar plucks away into silence. She catches herself, curls her arm back.

The spell is broken.

"You...that was beautiful." Kirk rubs his palms on the back of his t-shirt. He sniffs, trying to be causal. "Not as good as mine, but..."

She playfully whacks him with the microphone.

* * *

For her birthday (for he plans to see as many as possible, thank you) he bypasses the manicure and buys her two "safe" tribbles. They're small and fluffy like earth rabbits but are unable to breed (thank _everything_.)

"Watch this," He tells her. She has her arms folded, smiling in that tight, tolerant way, although she'd gasped and cooed and already cuddled them into oblivion.

He places the holodisk beside the box and presses _play._

It's _Beyond Antares._

As the first verse begins, the tribbles coo in rhythm, harmonising soft and low. Uhura goes still, turning her trained ear to the tribbles.

Spock and Bones leave their squabble. Sulu and Chekov abandon the birthday cake.

"They're a new breed," Kirk explains in a rush. "They found them on some outback planet. They....they uh, have their own language, communicate via song...thought since you liked...uh...language, thought you could...study them, cos' nobody has yet. And cuddle them too. For science."

"That's the darndest thing," Bones mutters, but he pets the purring pouches of fur.

"Fascinating," Spock turns away, with not even the first trace of bitterness.

Nyota's eyes shine at Kirk.

 _I'll be back, though it takes forever._  
_Forever is just a day._  
_Forever is just another journey._  
_Tomorrow a stop along the way..._

* * *

In his Captain's cabin, Kirk plays once again the holodisk left to him by Spock Prime.

_"Oh, on the Starship Enterprise there's someone...who could rip your heart from you..."_


End file.
